So are we one-dimensional or “merely” alienated in some conventional sense? Reviewing what we have said thus far, it seems that we may have reached a stage beyond alienation, a stage in which we have assumed the identity of our alienation to become one-dimensional. The difficulty associated with this state is that being completely one-dimensional it precludes all knowledge of any other form. Thus a one-dimensional being is incapable of deducing his one-dimensionality. Similarly he cannot conceive of, or recognize, his alienation. He is a manufactured man, a product of his technocracy, of relevance only so long as his style is the fashion. In this state even change (and a technological consumer society is all change) is not change, since it is manufactured for consumption. And alienation, or talk of alienation, is also manufactured.
Arguments about the validity of complete one-dimensionality appear intrinsically futile at first blush. The dilemma is that presented by Patrick McGoohan in his scripts for the British television series entitled The Prisoner. In The Prisoner a secret service agent, sick of the deceit in his trade, resigns. On the verge of leaving on a long holiday he is attacked and drugged in his room. He regains consciousness in a village, and finds that he is a prisoner. The village represents a completely controlled society. Everyone is provided an identity, and a role. There is no outside, no world beyond the village. All needs are provided for, no questions are tolerated. Indeed, none are ever asked except by the new prisoner. And he is never given an answer.
The dilemma of the agent is that he doesn’t know who his captors are: do they represent his past employer or the “other side”? Is he in his own country or a foreign one? And finally he begins to doubt his true identity: has he not lived in the village all his life? Everyone says so. Everyone knows him.
After several unsuccessful escape attempts the agent decides to play the game, to accept his one-dimensional existence and cease to rail against his alienation. He decides to attempt to identify the mysterious Number One who controls the village. He suspects that Number One is really his old employer. After a period of machination he penetrates the hierarchy, identifies Number Three and Number Two, and breaches the security surrounding Number One. He plans a confrontation with Number One: if it is his ex-boss he will bargain for freedom, if an enemy he will kill and escape.
Finally the crucial moment arrives and he enters the control centre of Number One. He is confused because the room is empty, when Number One’s presence was guaranteed. A door opens and Number Two enters. He greets Number One and asks for instructions. The agent has not escaped: as Number One he is the warden of his own captivity. Perhaps even he has always been Number One. After all, is that not his identity?
Once more, then, are we one-dimensional as Marcuse argues, or are we in the advanced stages of alienation? Or is the matter unresolvable in the last analysis?
SOURCE: Shaw, Steven G. (Montreal). “Beyond Alienation: a Critique of Marcuse’s One-Dimensionality Hypothesis,” in Philosophie et culture: actes du XVIIe Congrès mondial de philosophie = Philosophy and Culture: Proceedings of the XVIIth World Congress of Philosophy, édité par / edited by Venant Cauchy (Montréal: Editions Montmorency, 1988), vol. 3, pp. 585-588. This excerpt, p. 587.
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